Innovation through tradition

Change in the energy industry has to be driven by innovation. But this does not mean traditional hydropower is obsolete. On the contrary: it is the reliable motor that helps make innovation possible in the first place.

Generation

The Teverola combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant in the southern Italian province of Caserta has been in operation since 2007. Originally designed to cover base and intermediate load, primarily during the week, a shift in requirements and market conditions has meant that the plant is now often deployed for a very different purpose. All in all, CCGT plants currently find themselves in a very difficult market situation. However, thanks to its good strategic position, the Teverola plant is increasingly deployed at weekends for the ancillary services market, enabling it to at least partly make up for this unfavourable operating environment. Teverola's flexibility means it can provide ancillary services to stabilise the electricity grid, which are remunerated accordingly by Terna, the Italian grid operator. These changes in the way the plant is deployed have resulted in an interesting mode of collaboration between the teams at Teverola and Sales, with power plant staff offering their counterparts in Sales support including evaluations of thermal images taken as part of the VAMPA offering (see next pages). This illustrates the way Repower is addressing the current market challenges proactively, with the emphasis on making the most of in-house know-how and synergies.

Production at the three wind farms, Corleto Perticara in Basilicata, Giunchetto in Sicily, and Lucera in Apulia, slightly lagged behind expectations overall, albeit with major weather-related differences between the installations. The advantage of wind farms is that the electricity they generate can be fed into the grid at any time; renewable wind power is given preferential treatment, and is not subject to the same market-related production limits imposed on other technologies.

The approval process for the Campolattaro project in the Campania region moved further ahead in 2014, and is currently at the environmental impact assessment stage. Repower is also in the process of negotiating with potential investors. The planned pumped-storage plant is designed to some day provide urgently needed storage capacity at a strategically important location to facilitate integration of new renewables in southern Italy.

In the future, Repower Italy's focus will be on capitalising on production from existing assets, and forging ahead with developing its sales operations and new energy services.